THIS WEEK’S PROJECT

Children: The Greatest Gift

Psalms 127:4 (NKJV) Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So [are] the children of one’s youth. 5/Happy [is] the man who has his quiver full of them; They shall not be ashamed, But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.

If you travel to churches all over the world for 40 years like I have you will observe a lot of things. One of the things I’ve seen from time to time is preachers kids that are wounded because their parents prioritized the church and ministry over raising their own children. Many PK’s deal with extreme bitterness against their parents and even resent God. I was in a church one time and the pastors son told me, “I know my dad as my pastor, but I feel like I didn’t have a real father.”

Action

I preached in a church one time that the most important disciples we will ever have are the people in our family. I talked about the truth that God never expected us to win the world and lose our kids. We have to make our family a priority over the ministry. Over dinner after church the pastor’s wife questioned my message. She said, “But didn’t Jesus say we were to seek first the kingdom of God?” She was equating the kingdom of God as being the ministry. But it’s not. The kingdom of God is living our life based on the priorities God established in the Bible.

The family was created before any other relationships on the earth and comes before our ministry. Ministering to your own family is actually the hothouse God uses to train you to successfully minister to the public. 1 Timothy 3:5 (NLT) “For if a man cannot manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?”

The most important disciples you and I have in life are our family. Yes, we are called to preach Jesus to the world, but God never intended us to do that at the expense of losing our own family.